UT Houston launches geriatric training with $3.25 million in grant, matc...(ation Memorial Hermann and the UT Health...),Health

Matching funds came from the late Roy Huffington, Huffington Endowed Lecture Series, Othello "Bud" and Nelwyn Hare, Memorial Hermann Foundation, Harris County Hospital District and the Office of the Dean at the medical school.

TEXAS has five components:

• a medical school curriculum including case-based learning in a virtual world in all four years;
• an education program using electronic "sound bytes" with geriatric principles and follow-up geriatrics case studies for residents from internal medicine, family and community medicine, emergency medicine, neurology, orthopedic surgery, general surgery, urology and physical medicine and rehabilitation;
• a program to educate faculty from multiple disciplines to reinforce geriatric competencies among residents in their specialty areas;
• the Reynolds Visiting Professor Program that will bring in experts from other Reynolds Foundation sites to share their expertise;
• and the implementation of elder abuse education seminars, an area of expertise for UT Medical School geriatricians, for teams in the university's affiliated emergency centers and outpatient clinics.

Sharon K. Ostwald, Ph.D., professor in the Center on Aging at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston School of Nursing, is director of evaluation for TEXAS.

"We will be working to collect and analyze data from all the different educational interventions to see what changes occur in knowledge, attitudes and skills in geriatrics, and also monitoring changes in the care of geriatric patients over the four-year grant," said Ostwald, holder of the Isla Carroll Turner Chair in Gerontological Nursing.

Elmer Bernstam, M.D., associate professor at The University of Texas School of Health Information Sciences at Hous
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